The Redemption of Gregory Goyle
by Omi-Omi
Summary: A gift fic: the story of how Greg was redeemed, set in the Sleeping Dragon 'verse. A little bit of HPDM in the background.
1. Part One

**A/N: **This is a little gift fic for **birdsofshore** (set in the _Sleeping Dragon_ 'verse), in thanks for all the pre-reading and cheerleading she does. She specifically requested the story of how Greg, who makes the briefest of appearances in _Sleeping Dragon,_ finds redemption. If you haven't read that, there might be mini-spoilers, so just be warned. Also, go read it! It is a sort of sweet/angsty/hurt/comfort kind of fic, about memory loss and love, and it is one of the best things I've written: I promise you'll like it. Reviews always welcome.

This isn't Drarry, although there are hints of it around the edges (_Sleeping Dragon_ is Drarry, though, as is most of what I write).

Thanks to **Evilgiraffe82** for the speedy beta. Any mistakes remaining are my own.

* * *

**The Redemption of Gregory Goyle - Part One**

Before he first left for Hogwarts, Greg had been given clear instructions by his father to attach himself as soon as possible to Draco Malfoy.

"I know that he can be an insufferable little turd, Greg, but the Malfoys are our best bet for security. Lucius has proven that he survives well through good times and bad, and there are worse alliances for us to make."

The Sorting Hat had placed him in Slytherin without a moment's hesitation: anyone whose life was as plotted out as Greg's couldn't be in any other house.  
Over the years, Greg and Vince had fallen easily into the roles of mindless minions, stupid sidekicks, gormless goons. There was a certain sense of security in knowing that he was needed, but never required to think for himself. After a while, he didn't even try. Occasionally, he would let Malfoy, or whoever else was talking, prattle on about their plans or their pride, and he would nod and grunt as required, but really would be looking at the way the flames flickered in the fire place, or the clouds moved across the sky. To be honest, these simple things were often more interesting. He knew, of course he knew, that he had a reputation as being slow. He didn't mind though, because it was one way to avoid being seen as a threat. And in Slytherin, being seen as a threat was not a good thing at all.

Greg knew that his father's advice had been good. Every time he looked in the mirror he could see that his family's alliances wouldn't be made on looks; there would be no grand Goyle weddings, no social butterflying for him. It had all been working well right up until the wall of flames had leapt up in the Room of Requirement. As Vince had fallen away, as he and Malfoy had been saved by Potter and Weasley, Greg could see that everything was changing. The Dark Lord's death, a few hours later, had come as no surprise.

After the war, he and his family retreated away as far as they could. His father, like the fathers of all his friends, ended in Azkaban, from where he would pen letters which were at first stoic, but which began to grow faintly desperate before trailing off to a brief birthday message once a year. Greg mourned for his father's liberty and his mind, but knew there was nothing he could do.

He and his mother lived in a small house in the Midlands, and Greg grew to like his quiet life, free of goon-duties. He performed months of community service, rebuilding Hogwarts and the many homes and shops which had been damaged by Death Eaters. The more destruction he saw, the more he began to actually think about what he'd been involved in, and the less he liked it.

Slowly, the mood in the country changed, serious discussion and sombre words being replaced by a reckless party atmosphere as the generation who'd had their teen years cut short decided to catch up on all they'd missed. Greg resisted for a while, but in the end moved to London and found his former housemates enjoying late nights, drink and loud music. There was more going on, of course, but Greg's tastes remained simple.

When he bumped into Malfoy again, he was shocked by what he saw. First of all, Malfoy was laughing, his head thrown back and mouth wide open. Secondly, he had his arm around Harry Potter's waist. He bought Greg a drink and apologised for being a prick to him. Greg could barely make out the words, as his brain struggled to catch up with the sight of Malfoy's fingers gently stroking the back of Potter's neck. By the time Malfoy was insisting that he call him Draco, and inviting him back for more drinks at the home he and Harry shared, you could have told Greg that Dumbledore had come back from the dead and was dressed in a bikini while dancing with a chicken, and he wouldn't have been surprised; anything seemed possible in that moment.

It turned out that without their family's expectations crushing common sense and their innate personalities, many of the Slytherins were actually quite nice people, and popular too. Thanks to Draco's insistence, Greg signed up for a wizard-Muggle volunteering stint, and found himself buying cat food and beer for Bernard, who never wore socks and lived in a house lined with books. Bernard was incredibly bad-tempered, but compared to his years as a goon, being talked down to and ignored, it wasn't too bad. Greg began to read aloud from Bernard's books, slowly, but carefully. According to Bernard, you could hear each word being savoured as Greg read. And he was, indeed, savouring the words. It was as if the moments in which he had quietly watched the world around him had been seen by others, and suddenly Greg felt less alone.

One day, he arrived to find the books packed up. Bernard was moving to a nursing home near his daughter's house, and although it would have been easy enough for Greg to continue visiting, thanks to Apparition, he couldn't really without breaking the Statute of Secrecy. When he said goodbye, Bernard thrust a book into his hands. Greg only looked through it after Bernard had gone; it was a journal, blank, except for the line 'Greg, fill this with your own words: I have a suspicion that you have things to say.' Greg kept the book by his bedside for a month before deciding to write in it. Within two months it was full, and he had to buy a new one: once he had started writing, it had been like floodgates opening and hundreds of words poured out. He described the quiet moments and the hidden beauties of each day. He wrote about his father, alone and lost for words in his cell. He described the physical space he occupied in the world.

It was Pansy who read the poems, and gently encouraged him to get them published. And so, Gregory Goyle, against all expectations, became a poet, his first book dedicated to a Muggle who would never read his poems.

* * *

Shaving  
By Gregory Goyle

Familiar valleys greet me  
Their sadness clear  
Each tiny imperfection amplified,  
Until all I see are the scars, the pits, the endless  
Broken edges  
As I stretch skin taut over the lumpen ridges  
Of a jaw set  
By years of growls  
Grunts  
Mindless, thoughtless  
Empty.

No gentle words  
No loving caress  
To define the angles of my face  
No soft-mouthed kiss to centre  
Me

The razor moves in clean lines  
The raw scrape  
A punishment  
But then the cliff edge falls  
Down to the sea  
And years collect in each crevice  
Until the landscape holds me  
In its shadows

Freshly scraped  
Skin over bone tells  
The story of a life


	2. Part Two

The second part to my little gift fic for **birdsofshore**. This part is from a different PoV, and owes its existence to the squees birdsofshore made when she read Part One. And really, this is the part with the mini-spoilers for _Sleeping Dragon._ The poems were written quickly: I hope they're ok.

Thanks again to **Evilgiraffe82** for the speedy pre-read. Any remaining mistakes are my own.

* * *

**The Redemption of Gregory Goyle - Part Two**

Luna had long sought comfort in the stories her father told her. It was easier to look for Wrackspurts than to acknowledge that sometimes people's minds were stretched and stressed until they broke. It was easier, too, to ponder on the presence of nargles rather than dwell on the cruelty people would display to someone even a little bit different.

In the second year of medical school though, Luna had been struck by a powerful epiphany, while reading an textbook about the workings of the mind. Seeing it all laid out in a flowing set of theories, like a map, she realised this was a journey she wanted to go on. There were so many mysteries, so much fragility to help shore up; so many questions left to ask.

Luna found herself falling into the world of the mind, and she loved it. She pushed and delved but always felt there was more to discover. She found that she had lost her need to see her father's creatures, and was never entirely sure if she believed in them or not.

One day, she had enjoyed a cosy meal with Harry and Draco, and was curled up on the settee in their beautiful, if formal drawing room, smiling to herself at the straight lines around her, so evocative of Draco's elegant sense of aesthetics; it brought to mind his neat script and careful word choices. They had both disappeared to fetch more wine – a feeble excuse for a quick kiss in the corridor, she was sure – when her eyes fell on the slim volume lying on the coffee table, its cover a murky blue-grey, simple white print spelling out the words 'Falling from the cliff' and the initials 'G.G.' She picked it up and began to read through.  
By the time a slightly ruffled looking Draco and Harry returned (she hoped that all they had been doing was kissing, but didn't let her mind dwell on it for too long), Luna was immersed in the strange, sad poems of the book. They used simple words but were filled with the joys of the tiniest of moments, the sadness of a life.

"Oh, I see you've found Greg's poems," said Draco. Luna stared at him.

"Greg?" she asked, her voice faint.

"Greg," repeated Draco. "Big man, quiet—"

"Former minion," added Harry, which earned him an elbow in the ribs. "You can borrow it, if you want."

"Greg," said Luna, as she brushed the book with her hand.

A few months later, she bumped into Greg, quite literally, at Pansy and Blaise's home. She found herself shy around him, which was so unlike her that it in of itself rendered her speechless. She watched him, quietly, as he sat in a corner and talked a little to a few of his friends. How had she not noticed the way his eyes swept across the room before? Suddenly, she saw how they rested for a fraction of a second on every tiny detail, before moving on.

That night, when she got home, slightly tipsy and flushed with the joy of having been with friends, she opened up the book of poems again, dipping in at random. The book's spine was well creased now, the odd splatter of coffee and wine marking the pages. She fell asleep with the book open on her chest.

Luna didn't really have the time to dwell on her private thoughts when she had so much to do at work. There were so many people with fractured corners to their minds, after the war, and some would pop up years later. Eventually, she managed to gain access to Azkaban, and was both fascinated and troubled by her interviews with the former Death Eaters. When she met Mr Goyle, senior, his son's words kept travelling around her head. She couldn't stop them, even if she wanted to.

_Waves rise and fall  
Memories come and go  
Pain fades  
Emptiness remains_

It made her shudder, more than anything else she saw or heard. One man's imaginings about his father. It was rare for anyone to have access to the prisoners in Azkaban, and she resolved to find Greg and tell him how his father was. If he wanted to know.

They met in a slightly shabby cafe, after one of her shifts at St Mungo's. She was tired, but nothing would have kept her from this meeting. He seemed... reserved, and she didn't know what to say when confronted by his silence. She drew on all her skills, learned through years as a Mind Healer, and calmed and cleared her mind. Gently, oh so gently, she explained that she was writing a study on the effects of incarceration on the mind. Greg paled, but nodded for her to continue. She told him that she had seen his father, and they sat without talking, his eyes closed, as he steeled himself to hear what she had to say. She told him of his father, a barely-there shadow of his former self, but one who was still able to hold a conversation, no matter how slow or haltingly. She described his copy of Greg's book, worn and well read; she kept quiet as Greg's shoulders heaved and his hands covered a suddenly wet face.

Afterwards she did not know if she had done the right thing, and she agonised about the pain she had caused, the old wounds reopened.

The next time they met was at Harry and Draco's. She was preoccupied with Draco's still-partial memories, but reassured to see the two men as in love as ever. They were rebuilding their lives, and the pain in Harry's eyes had lessened. Draco had the strangest air about him: half man, half startled seventeen-year old.

Luna shivered when she realised that Greg's observant eye was fixed on her. And then she went to talk to him, and the time passed so swiftly that before she knew it, the evening was over and she hadn't talked to anyone else. He invited her to a poetry reading, and she said yes, still reluctant to reveal that she had read all his poems, that the words lulled her to sleep at night.

In the midst of a row of chairs, at the back of Flourish and Blotts, Luna closed her eyes and let the words wash through her.

_Flames flicker,  
Lick past  
The store of generations;  
Reduced to wood  
Fuel  
Fire  
Ashes_

Death

She heard the words in her head at the same time as he spoke them: she knew the words, she knew the story. She wished she knew the man. He cleared his throat, and she opened her eyes to see his gaze on her, for a moment.

"This is something new. New in lots of ways - it's not quite what I've written before," he said, before closing his eyes and sitting back. When he began to recite the poem, his voice was so quiet that a concentrated hush fell over the small audience.

_The pink shell curls  
Waiting to hear  
Secrets whispered on the air_

Green globes swing  
The world on a chain  
Earth arisen

Moon-bright you shine  
With eyes clear  
and mind dancing

As paths form  
A map of thoughts  
Spun from words, and sighs

And the hand as it moves  
The silk flying  
In wisps in the wind

The stars swing by  
As I watch and listen  
And wait.

As soon as he started talking, Luna found the breath frozen on her lips as her body ceased to move, until her hand rose to her ear, and the tiny green cabbages hanging from fine sliver chains.

That night, she marvelled that she hadn't done this sooner, as Greg whispered poetry into her skin. He had so many words, all saved for her, and he told her them all on a flow of passion that never really slowed, no matter how many years it lasted.


End file.
